The contractor for legacy cleanup at the Energy Department’s Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, Newport News Nuclear BWXT-Los Alamos (N3B), has hired a subcontractor to remove telephone poles, old fences, and tons of concrete from Technical Area 21.
The $1.5 million contract was awarded to a team of Montana-based Envirocon and Los Alamos-based TerranearPMC, N3B said Tuesday.
Technical Area 21 hosted chemical research for refining plutonium and related operations at LANL from 1945 into the 1978. A separate liquid waste treatment plant operated there from 1952 until 1986. Today, TA-21 groundwater is monitored for tritium and other contaminants.
In addition to disposing of hundreds of tons of concrete debris from old building slabs, as well as disposing an old concrete crusher and other abandoned equipment, the subcontractors will also remove rebar and decontaminate some gear, including excavators, for reuse. A new perimeter fence will be installed around the 40-acre work area
In a press release, N3B said its workers have been removing vegetation from the site before the subcontractor team starts its assignment in November. Removal of the above-ground debris near the light-industrial area is supposed to be finished in April 2019.
“The material being addressed in this phase of cleanup is low-level waste,” N3B spokesman Todd Nelson said by email Wednesday. “We’ll be characterizing all of the material before field work begins.”
TerranearPMC did similar work around the DOE facility for the prior LANL environmental management contractor, Los Alamos National Security. That joint venture – encompassing University of California, Bechtel, AECOM and BWXT –is also this month wrapping up its tenure as the lab’s management and operations contractor.
Envirocon has done a significant amount of decommissioning and demolition work in the energy industry, including uranium production facilities, according to its website.
Newport News Nuclear BWXT-Los Alamos expects to issue another Technical Area 21 subcontract in early 2019 for removal of old underground industrial waste lines and teardown of a processing facility for radioactive liquids.
The N3B venture began its nearly $1.4 billion, 10-year contract at Los Alamos in April.
